The After Party
by Whatsername Lambert
Summary: AU oneshot. After months of trying to decipher his feelings for Kurt, Blaine finally works up the courage to act on them. Scene from the novel/original story I've been talking about, fanfictionized.


Hi again! I'm dropping in again, this time as kind of a PR stunt and a bit of shameless self-promotion.

After my brief return last month (and even before that) I'd received some messages from people wanting to read the original story I've been working on. I've been working on it since summer 2013 and even made a Fictionpress account so I could publish it there, but got scared and decided to hold off on publishing it there.

I put that story on a brief hiatus this summer while I worked through the direction I wanted it to go, and I just picked it up again within the past two or three months. I was working on it this evening, and the amaretto sour I was sipping on must have been a little too strong because suddenly I find myself thinking, "Hey, I should totally post this."

So the story is on Fictionpress, it's called The Sunset Chaser and my pen name is dancingtoyourrockandroll. I just posted the prologue, but I've got about 40K more words written and I'll try to update maybe weekly or something like that. There's a link in my profile, I don't know if I'm allowed to put one here in a story doc so let's not chance it. Because some of you lovely people had expressed interest in reading it (thankyouthankyouthankyou!) I thought it might be a good idea to introduce it here so that you can actually find it. This here is a quick scene from TSC (I haven't actually written up to this part yet, but I wanted to get this idea out of my mind.

Just for some context (since this scene happens nowhere near the beginning), here's the romantic side of things in TSC. It's the mid 80s. Straight boy (SB) meets gay boy (GB). GB likes SB, but knows there's no chance in hell of anything happening because SB is straight (duh) and he has a girlfriend. They become friends, and soon SB finds himself having some really confusing feelings for GB. In this scene, it's prom night and their friend group has rented out a bunch of rooms at a local hotel for their after party. SB has finally realized the magnitude of his feelings for GB and needs a little bit of time alone so he can try and make sense of everything (and also think about what he should do about that pesky girlfriend). I swear it's more than a love story, there's a lot more going on, but that's basically what you need to know to understand what's happening here.

I wrote this with the names of the characters in my story and then just ran a find/replace to replace all the names with Glee characters so I could publish it here as fanfic. I will go ahead and say right now, for anyone that may read TSC, that one of the two main guys is named either Kurt or Blaine. (You get to read it and find out which one kept his name!) I did NOT do that because of Glee, I picked his name for another reason that I may eventually explain in a future author's note. So don't get too excited :)

Anyway, that's it! Hope you enjoy this and TSC.

**The After Party**

I've been in Rachel's and my hotel room for a long time now. Hours? I can't tell. That's what it seems like, at least. I'm probably missing out on a round of Fun Teenage Memories, but strangely enough, I don't mind. It's nice to sit alone in complete silence and let all my thoughts catch up to me.

Just as I'm relishing my privacy, a knock at the door startles me right back into reality. I roll my eyes and get up off the bed - my rented tux is probably wrinkled from my sitting unelegantly in it, but I don't care. As soon as I get rid of whoever's at the door, I can flop down on the bed again and go back to thinking about nothing and everything all at once.

"What do you want?" My voice comes out a little more caustically than I intended as I whip open the door.

My face immediately burns red when I see who's on the other side of the threshold. It's Kurt, and he looks pretty taken aback for a second, but manages to recompose himself remarkably as always, speaking before I can mutter an apology.

"I just...I wanted to see how you were doing," he says. I'd told the rest of the group that I _wasn't feeling well _in order to excuse myself from the after party in the first place. "How are you feeling? Can I bring you anything?"

I stand there stupidly for a moment, impressed by his generosity, and a new wave of red heats up my face as I step aside a few inches.

"No, um." _Was I ever this flustered around Rachel before we started dating? _"You can come in. If you want."

He does. I close the door behind him and slide my suddenly sweaty palms up and down my pants leg a few times while his back is turned.

"Everyone hopes you're feeling okay and that you'll come back to the party soon," Kurt says with a smile as we sit on the edge of the bed. I make sure to leave a foot or two of space in between us. _Just in case_. I would never act on my feelings for him - the feelings that I know, without a doubt in my mind anymore, are real - while I'm still with Rachel, but his eyes look unbelievably beautiful even in the bland, standard-issue hotel room light and I don't exactly trust myself right now.

"What is it?" he asks after I don't respond. His smile fades into worry. "And don't just say 'nothing.' I know you. I know it's something."

I meet his eyes, find myself feeling overwhelmed, look away for a second to collect my thoughts. Try again. He's looking back at me with nothing but the utmost concern. I take a deep breath or two or five. He's already put his heart on the line by telling me how he feels, and although I've managed to confess that I had confusing feelings for him that may have been reciprocal, I still haven't told him about the epiphany that's been slowly unfolding over the past few months. I've made some sense of my feelings, accepted them, and I even want to act on them.

"I didn't want to go to prom with Rachel," I hear myself say after a heavy silence. "I wanted to go with you. I wanted to dance with you and spend the whole night by your side. It's taken a long time and it's been really fucking confusing but I've finally made sense of everything. Of how I feel about you. And I'm finally feeling brave enough that if I wasn't with Rachel, I would lean over right now and kiss you."

In the next second or two, Kurt's face rushes through more emotions than I can count. His startlingly beautiful eyes widen and a smile touches his face as he takes in my last few words, then he casts his gaze down as a blush colors his face. When he looks up at me a second or two later, there's something different in his gaze. A stubborn kind of sadness. I can see tears shining in his eyes, but he blinks a few times to prohibit them from falling. He's not one to cry in front of people, but I can tell that he's dangerously close to slipping over the edge.

"I keep telling myself no," he insists. I can hear his voice breaking, threatening to shatter. "Before I met you, I was absolutely forbidding myself to fall for anyone. I refused to let my heart get broken again. Then _that _ended up not working out when I met you for the first time. You liked girls. You had - _have _a girlfriend, and no apparent reason to break up with her. I told myself not to wait for you. But that's - that's exactly what I've been doing."

He pauses for a moment. I think I see a tear shining on his cheek, but he reaches up to flick it away and it's gone just as soon as it appeared.

"I always thought I was stronger than this. I never thought I'd be the type of person to wait for anyone," he continues. "But you - you're worth waiting for, Blaine. It's miserable and pathetic and frustrating, yeah, but I keep holding onto that last little bit of hope that maybe something will happen. You told me that I was the first boy you'd ever felt this way about - but I can say the same thing about you, in a different sense. You're the first one I've ever waited for."

He's silent for a moment, then suddenly he breaks into laughter, the emotional contrast shattering the tension a bit. "Wow, I'm sorry. Not to make you feel obligated or anything. I swear that wasn't my intention."

"No, no, you're fine," I assure him. "I, uh, I actually came in here because - this is going to sound absolutely horrible - but I was trying to think of how I can break things off with Rachel."

Kurt's eyes widen again and he immediately starts shaking his head, as if trying to negate any possibility of me doing so. "No, no, no, no, no. I can't let you do that for me. That's the most selfish thing I could ever imagine."

"Look, Kurt. If I'm being honest…," I pause for a moment, trying to find the right words, accepting after a second or two that no words will ever be right enough.

"What I feel for you is stronger than what I feel - maybe even what I've _ever _felt for her," I admit after a beat or two of silence. "Ever since you sat down next to me on the first day of school, I've known there was something about you, even if I didn't know how to make sense of it for a while." He cracks a smile at that, which gives me a boost of confidence to continue.

"You are selfless and patient and humble and kind, but you have this passion - for life, for _everything _- that's unlike anything I've ever seen before. You demand respect in the most subtle and elegant way. I wanted to know you from the moment I met you, and now I can say that I really, truly like what I've gotten to know."

I find myself hesitating again for what seems like a full minute but is probably really only about five seconds. Time moves slowly when you're articulating strange, pent-up feelings to someone who is completely and totally unlike anyone you ever expected yourself to fall for.

"And Rachel? She's - she's not a bad person at all," I say, giving her the benefit of the doubt at first, "but it's just…it's not the same with her now. I don't know. Ever since all that stuff around Valentine's Day-," I don't want to say it; I know it upsets him and he knows exactly what I'm talking about, "there's just been something...different. And not different in a good way. I just - I don't know. I don't want to be with her anymore, but I also don't want to break her heart."

"I understand," Kurt says simply. "How does that song go? 'Breaking up is hard to do.'" He sings the title quietly, almost like he's embarrassed, but I find myself grinning like a fool. He is so cute and I am so okay with actually thinking those words about him.

Fortunately, when he meets my eyes he's smiling as well. It appears that we've come to some kind of mutual understanding that we're going to prolong the inevitable while I try to think of the least heartbreaking way possible to break it off with Rachel.

He stands up all of a sudden, his face brightening with an idea, and heads over to the chair where I've half-assedly thrown my backpack.

"Do you mind if I borrow your Walkman?" he asks, even as he's already started digging through my bag for it.

I can't exactly stop him now. "Go ahead. There's some tapes in there, too."

He eventually extracts the Walkman, headphones tangled hopelessly around it, and resumes rooting through my backpack. Eventually he produces a handful of tapes, which he proceeds to look over before finding something he likes. He pops the cassette into the player and smiles over at me while fast-forwarding to whatever song has caught his attention.

"This would be much easier if we had a stereo, so I apologize in advance," he admits. "But I think after what we've just told each other, we could both use this."

He stops fast-forwarding and presses Play to see where the tape is at, but I can't tell what song is playing because the headphones are still plugged in. He frowns, rewinds a bit, unplugs the headphones and plays with the volume control for a moment before pressing Play.

I recognize the song immediately - I got _sick _of this song for a while when it was at the top of the charts a few months ago - but suddenly I realize what he's doing, and no song could be more perfect.

He's still smiling as he heads back to where I've remained sitting on the bed, extending his hand like the gentleman he's been raised to be.

"May I have this dance?"

Without even thinking, I reach out and let him pull me gently up from the bed and into the proper position to dance. Kevin Cronin's voice blares from the Walkman as he sings about how he can't fight this feeling anymore, and I let Kurt pull me closer. I can feel his heart beating against my chest, seemingly about to pound its way inside. This dance is the most intimate physical contact we've ever had, and as the song continues, I find myself craving more in the worst way.

After a blissful five minutes that seem to have passed by entirely too quickly, the song ends, but Kurt and I make no move to pull away from each other. His eyes are locked on mine and I can't look away, even if I'd wanted to. I lean in even closer so that our foreheads and the tips of our noses are touching. His breath tickles my lips and I can feel my eyes fluttering closed. I am more okay with this than I ever thought I would be.

"You can't." Kurt's voice comes as a startling wake-up call in the form of a soft murmur. "Rachel."

"I don't care." My voice comes out almost as a sigh. "I want this. You."

Past the point of no return, I inch my face even closer to his. I crave him with every cell in my body, down to the marrow in my bones. The edge of my top lip grazes a millimeter of the edge of his, and everything in me threatens to melt.

Suddenly I'm kissing something - some part of him - but definitely not his lips. It's his finger, which he's inserted between our mouths to keep me from crossing that line.

"I can't let you do this," he says. His voice is low and weighed down with seriousness. "This is taking every last ounce of my willpower right now. But I will not let you cheat on her."

I nod, crashing back to reality and keep my lips pressed against his finger as I whisper my reluctant response. "Okay."

We remain just like that for a few more frozen seconds until a knock at the door startles us apart. God knows what any of our friends would think if they'd witnessed what just happened between us.

"Blaine?" A voice accompanies the knock. It belongs to Rachel. I curse under my breath and call in the general direction of the door that I'll be right there.

"Thank you," I whisper to Kurt.

He leans in without saying a word and presses his lips tenderly against my forehead. I'm expecting it to just be a quick peck, but he lets his mouth linger against my skin for a pleasantly surprising few seconds, and I let myself melt into him.

"Goodnight," he whispers simply.

I'm too stunned to move, so I stay exactly where I am as he heads over to the door. Needless to say, Rachel is rather surprised to see him and not me. To see him in my room, period.

"Kurt," she says. "What are you doing here?"

"I just came to check on Blaine and make sure he was okay," he lies smoothly without missing a beat. "We got to talking and I - I guess I forgot to come back to the party."

I can hear the fake smile in her voice as she responds. "Well, I'll take over from here. I appreciate your concern."

Before I can even blink, they've switched places and Rachel is closing the door on Kurt. She turns toward me with a smile that appears genuine this time.

"How are you doing?" she asks as she makes her way over to me (a task that looks difficult considering the size of and amount of fabric on her prom dress). She perches on the bed next to me and lays a hand on my forehead.

"I'm good," I tell her. "I don't have a fever. Hey, can we talk?"

I'm going to do it - right now, while I'm riding out the high of my encounter with Kurt. I need to end things once and for all with her and I need to try and do it in the least disappointing way possible.

But she smirks mischievously and pushes me back so that I'm laying down, then climbs over me so that she's straddling my waist.

"Talk later," she says as she smothers my mouth with hers. "You're obviously feeling okay and I've missed you."

She kisses me and I reciprocate, following her lead from there. I go through the motions and even throw in a little feigned enthusiasm here and there. When all is said and done, she's nestled in my arms with her dress pulled down haphazardly around her midsection, a blissful smile on her face.

"Thanks for a great prom night," she murmurs drowsily, her eyes falling closed. "Even though you disappeared for a while just now."

She's too far gone for us to have any kind of productive conversation now. It'll have to wait until morning. I roll my eyes (after making sure hers are closed) and kiss the top of her head, murmuring a reluctant _I love you _into her hair.

Breaking her heart will be the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but there's no doubt in my mind that he will be worth it.

* * *

><p>I'll go ahead and add that I was born in 1994 and had to google "how does a Walkman work." So there's that. Thank you for reading!<p> 


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